Critical Analysis of the Swedish Biofuel Policy using Emergy Synthesis

Emergy synthesis is used as a tool for a critical analysis of biofuels promoted by the Swedish energy policies. We evaluate the production process of three different biofuels in Sweden: Ethanol from wheat (Transformity: 9.19E+04 seJ/J, Renewability: 12% Emergy Yield Ratio: 1.15); methanol from willow (second generation biofuel) (Transformity: 6.06E+04 seJ/J, Renewability: 10% Emergy Yield Ratio: 1.11) and biodiesel from rapeseed (Transformity: 13.6E+04 seJ/J, Renewability: 11% Emergy Yield Ratio: 1.27). Furthermore, the discourse analysis shows that the Swedish Government also promotes the biofuel import from Brazil because it is considered to be more efficient and environmental safe than comparable options taking in consideration the energy and life cycle assessments results. Because of that, the production and use of ethanol from Brazil has been and still are strongly supported by the Swedish authorities. Therefore we also include the evaluation of the ethanol production in Brazil from sugarcane (Transformity: 7.07E+04 seJ/J, Renewability: 19% Emergy Yield Ratio: 1.38). Result shows that ethanol from sugarcane in Brazil presents a lower transformity and a higher degree of renewably than biofuels produced in Sweden. However, all the analyzed biofuels are heavily dependent of non renewable resources and have higher transformity than fossil fuels. From the information gained in the emergy synthesis, none of the analyzed biofuels can be considered a sustainable substitute for fossil fuels due to their very low Emergy Yield Ratio and low renewability degree. Furthermore, important negative impacts on the natural and social capital still are not considered in those evaluations. Because of that we believe that the findings of this work can be improved by the inclusion of these considerations and we strongly propose that the results from emergy system’s perspective must be taken into consideration in the decision process for biofuel polices.